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Monthly Archives: August 2015

On another evil, hateful, murderous day in America I want more than ever to come home and snuzzle my dog. Text my kids how much I love them. Go for a swim. Have a big glass of wine. Ponder fleeting existence, purpose and grace. Question God. Once again.

I’m not incisive enough to know what the hell is going on. To understand what it is, not just here but around the world, with the unchained hate, the smoldering vile, the wanton and soulless ability to take aim at other human beings and propel killing orbs of hot steel and lead into their flesh and vital organs.

I despair over the numbness that gradually takes root one bombing after the next gunning after the next ambush after the next drive-by. I rue the snake-infested swamp that has become of public discourse, steroid-fueled by digital anonymity and vapor dreams of narcissistic grandeur, the dark cloud of doom and cynicism that grows distended even as I try to ignore it.

I cry for my daughter moved now to look two, three and four ways before venturing out in her new city, an adventure that should be filled with delight, but in many ways induces dread. On both coasts.

These are universal and eternal questions, but I can only join the Greek chorus of endless, unresolvable rhetoric: I don’t know what God wants. I don’t know what the sacrifice of innocents is supposed to mean. I don’t know why whatever I did today for money is supposed to matter. I don’t know what to tell my kids. I hate not knowing what to tell my kids.

Really far afield here . . . because what I know and usually care about politics is like this (PowerPoint slide of hands held verrrrry close together) … but here’s my thought on explaining the Donald Trump phenomenon:

He is the magnetic, but half-crazy coach you always wanted to play for, no matter the sport. Right? Could be soccer, could be baseball, football, whatever. Remember when you were a wide-eyed kid trying to make that high school team, or hang on to your tenuous roster spot? You didn’t know or care how much your coach knew about the game, or what was really going on behind the curtain, as in who among the assistant coaches was really creating the game plan week to week. (Most do, you know . . . )

You just knew you liked your head coach, you liked his aggressive personality, his bubbling-over confidence, how great he made you feel at kickoff with his pre-game oratory, how you didn’t want to disappoint him — ”We can DO this. We are the BEST. Are you ready!?”

“Hell, yeah we are ready!!”

That’s what I see in Trump as a presidential candidate. He has conspicuously not answered — and very possibly cannot answer since he is a businessman concentrated on making bank these last 40 years — a single substantive, traditional question (other than how he legally worked the system as a builder) about domestic or foreign policy. Yes, he would build a wall or “bomb the hell”out of the Iraqi oil fields to defeat ISIS. What? Really? What?

But it seems there is an amazing multitude of people who don’t particularly care about specific and traditional domestic or foreign policy answers right now, but who instead are at the point where they just want to feel good about themselves and their country and god damn it, China is NOT gonna beat us again! — whatever that actually means.

And so we have Trump, the Charles Barkley of presidential politics, who can say anything — seriously, he can say anything — and get the Teflon “that’s just Donald being Donald” explain-away. You’re the Man, Donald!” (Cue multiple swooning Trump-o-philes shouting “Trump, Trump, Trump. . . .”

That’s what I think this is, pretty much. Those who run for national office are rare among us. But Trump has the gene (if not the world-leader intellect or strategery aptitude) to run without proving substantiveness other than he won’t get beat on deals. The expectation, then, is that he would hire competent (at the very least) cabinet members — and then get out of the way, like the best top executives.

That’s why I suspect Trump – thanks, too, to his mega-money — could be the one historic outlier who sticks this time. Who doesn’t run out of cash, or interest, etc. but who toughs it out through the hard pending winter of America’s venomous discontent.

For sure, based on the restaurant patrons I saw Thursday night who spontaneously shussed everybody around them and gathered near the TV when it came time for Trump to speak, the blustery, bombastic Man is a force with which to be reckoned. Now, and on into the grinding months of Election Season.